In the blink of an eye, the New York Stock Exchange halted trading earlier this week, leaving billions of dollars in limbo. The lessons are clear.

For almost four hours, the world watched with bated breath as the NYSE sorted out what they described as a “technical issue”. Ultimately, the issue was officially reported to be from engineers installing the wrong software on to the system – at least according to the NYSE.

All open orders were wiped as the stock exchange closed, and now many are questioning the official narrative on what happened.

No doubt, the markets welcomed a chance to cool down and limit potential damage from escalating situations around the world.

However we don’t even need to look for such malicious causes for these events to occur.

In the 2010 Flash Crash, the Dow Jones lost nearly 9% of its value in just 20 minutes. An investigation into the event blamed one trader who set up a trading algorithm that started firing out sell orders.

You can read into any of these episodes however you’d like and come up with your own theories for the cause. But what’s crystal clear is that our markets are extremely delicate and prone to rapid manipulation. If the only solution that our officials have is to print money or immediately halt trading, then you know the safety net has holes in it.

The fact is that in today’s technical environment, where systems are so globally integrated, we may have the wonderful benefits of being able to communicate and transact with people around the world in real time… but we also run the risk of having a butterfly effect event bring the entire system to its knees.

If there’s any silver lining to these events, it’s that they have put a bright spotlight on our electronic system’s vulnerabilities. And people are taking action. They’re taking action by moving at least some of their savings out of paper assets and into tangible assets, such as physical gold and silver.

At the end of the day, stocks, bonds and mutual funds can be worth no more than the paper they’re printed on. Gold and silver have always held value, and they always will hold value. Isn’t it time you owned some?

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